


Easy ice cream recipe

by AutumnEquinox



Category: RWBY
Genre: F/M, i just think she’s neat, just my take on Neo’s backstory, this is not polished but here you go
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-30
Updated: 2021-01-30
Packaged: 2021-03-16 20:41:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29088492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AutumnEquinox/pseuds/AutumnEquinox
Summary: They say it takes a village to raise a child. In Neo’s case, it was a circus.
Relationships: Neopolitan/Roman Torchwick
Comments: 4
Kudos: 17





	Easy ice cream recipe

**Author's Note:**

> I caught up with rwby and remembered I love Neo so very much, so here’s my take on her backstory before I’m proven wrong. Probably not as angsty as most of the theories about her but sometimes ladies just get to be little a evil. As a treat.

They say it takes a village to raise a child. In Neo’s case, it was a circus.

Daughter of the ringleader and a trapeze artist, her parents never paid her much pointed attention. She was everyone’s responsibility, and thus could easily slip away to go play without anyone worrying. As a result, she was raised with a perhaps excessive amount of freedom. Born completely mute, she was often treated more as a mascot for the circus than an actual child. Something like a kitten, allowed to roam freely, fed and loved by all but not seen as much more than adorable. Underestimated. That suited her just fine: she had hated rules as soon as she was old enough to know them, and no one bothered to check if the kitten was keeping out of trouble.

Very young, she took to acrobatics like a duck to water. She trained tirelessly and was quickly allowed to participate in the shows, the presence of a child prodigy among the performer being a draw for curious audiences. She loved the scene, the adoration of the spectators, pushing her body to limits the common man couldn’t dream to approach. She knew she was something special, literally flying over their heads while they stared in wonder.

At about the same time, she started school. Never the same one for more than a few weeks, and only when the circus stopped in cities big enough to stay that long. She was always the freak of every new school, of course. The strange, silent circus kid, who had never interacted with anyone close to her age, and could move in unbelievable ways with unnerving silence. Not only that, but trinkets and lunch money always seemed to vanish around her, though no one could ever prove she was the one taking them. There’s all kind of folks in a circus, and some of them can teach very interesting things. Sleight of hand may be ostensibly for magic tricks, but none could deny its usefulness in pickpocketing.

She was never well liked, and schoolyards have a predetermined fate for that type of children. Insults and paper balls to the back of the head, shoves in the hallways and spilled milk that always seemed to land on her, dirt in her backpack and rude scrawls on her desk. She quickly learned that being far more nimble, athletic and quick on her feet than her classmates gave a great advantage in fights, despite her small stature, and that breaking noses was a lot of fun. She got in trouble for it, of course, but no classroom detention could keep her imprisoned: if there was a window, she was scaling down the outer wall before the second bell could ring. If there wasn’t, the lock was picked and the room empty by the time the teacher came back with coffee. She was every teacher’s worst nightmare: a girl who had decided to test how far she could really go, and quickly found how flimsy the school’s authority really was. Her parents were rarely informed, many teachers simply assuming that they were the ones to have raised her that way. “You know how those carnies are,” one would whisper over the break room coffee machine, and their colleagues would agree, none of them having ever met a carnival worker. They were halfway right: there would have been little consequences for her, back home. Her parents had never been that involved in her life.

However, as she grew, mischief gradually took the colors of crime. Her violence became more refined, more serious, more preemptive than punitive. She got into the habit of making sure that within the first week of arriving at any new school, everyone would be too scared to bother her. She didn’t need their friendship. She only wanted to be left alone. And, in truth, she found a peculiar pride in being the frightening, silent monster sitting primly in the back of the classroom, knowing that her presence was enough to unsettle the biggest of her classmates. Her thievery now targeted much more valuable things than toys and spare change. Wallets and jewelry disappeared into the secret pockets she’d sown into her dresses, almost more for sport than for profit. Her semblance developed fairly early: at the age of twelve, her illusions would shatter at the slightest touch, but she could still take on the face of anyone she took a good look at, and that ability turned her from a nuisance to a veritable menace. At fourteen, she stole a car and went on a joyride, wearing the face of a classmate who had gotten on her nerves. What had begun as a simple plot to frame the offending boy awoke a new passion in her. The feeling of speed and freedom was almost as good as the moment where letting go of the trapeze, halfway between fall and flight. In the next years, she stole as many different types of vehicles as she could, learning to drive them on the fly and at great speed, adrenaline pumping into her vein. Chasing that thrill, to her, was the only meaning of life.

Eventually, though, her actions had to have consequences. She was finally pinched while trying to steal a lady’s wedding ring, and the circus did not appreciate the resulting visit from the cops. She’d got off easy enough, but her activities had long preoccupied those she lived with, and now for the first time her parents tried more than halfhearted attempts at lectures to discipline her. But it was much too late. She knew perfectly well they had no way to make her obey. They couldn’t give her extra chores: she simply ignored them. They couldn’t cut her pocket money: they never did give her any, and she had plenty of her own stashed where they couldn’t find it. They couldn’t ground her: the bird was flying out of the cage in minutes. All they achieved was making her angry. The carnival crew, which had always been spared from her kleptomaniac tendencies, suddenly found their possessions vanishing. No one could stop her; she could dance circles around anyone trying to lay a hand on her, silently giggling all the while. Eventually, the decision was made to do the one thing that could possibly be done: exclude her from the show.

She was furious. Love for the scene was by then the only thing keeping her with her family, and if she couldn’t perform, then she had no intention to stay. The night of the first show she wasn’t allowed to be a part of, she robbed the circus blind and vanished into the night.

Everything that could possibly hold value, she took, from money to jewelry to trinkets of any kind. She made sure to find every single picture she was in, every document mentioning her name, and cut out or censor every proof of her existence. It was a message, more than anything else: I was never here. Don’t come looking for me.

She was sixteen, and free as a bird. A thieving magpie, to be precise.

At first, she made a living through burglary, but soon she decided to rent out her services instead. If you wanted something recovered, someone killed or someone kidnapped, she had you covered for quite a reasonable price. She liked money, but she was still in it mostly for the game, and she preferred to leave her clients the headache of actually selling the spoils of her efforts. She quickly built up quite a reputation, and for two years she made a living on this business model. With the profit she now made, she could have saved up for surgery that would give her a voice, but she never felt the need to. She enjoyed staying quiet. No one ever knew what she really thought. Then, she was first contacted by a certain Roman Torchwick, who wanted a former colleague of his retrieved, preferably with the two shares of profit from a heist he’d made off with.

The job itself wasn’t anything special. She executed it quickly and efficiently, to his vocal appreciation. What matters is that afterwards, he invited her for coffee with all the manners of a gentleman and all the charisma of a conman.

She accepted. He was fun.

Torchwick was an eminently disreputable young man of twenty-one, former street urchin, self-described son of a bitch and a drunkard, arrested for the first time at thirteen and three more times before reaching majority. She learned all of that very quickly, because he absolutely loved the sound of his own voice, but she didn’t mind. She liked it too. He was a good storyteller. Besides, one of them had to fill the silence and it wasn’t going to be her. He ordered his coffee black but surreptitiously added a scandalous amount of sugar.

The second time he called for her services wasn’t long after. They went out for lunch afterwards.

The third time, he was barely disguising the fact that the job he was offering was just an excuse. He took her to dinner in quite a fancy restaurant, for people of their kind. She began to seriously wonder what she was going to do with him. She did like his company, his dramatic mannerisms, and his knack for planning a good heist. Tall and lanky, with his foppish red hair and excessive eyeliner, he wasn’t exactly pretty, but he was interesting to look at. Besides, he didn’t act like she was some sort of wraith, or a weapon. She liked being feared, but it didn’t lead to very interesting relationships. But he seemed to genuinely appreciate her as much as he did her talents. Not that he didn’t know that she could kill him without much trouble, but he seemed to appreciate that, too.

Still, she wasn’t naive. She knew how gentlemanly men could be when they wanted a woman’s favor, and how fast that could change. She decided to see how he’d react if he didn’t get what he wanted.

After the very good dinner, she let him take her back to his hotel. He showed her his unimpressive room with a grandiose wave of his arms as if he was inviting her into a palace, and she mimed awestruck viewing as she passed through the door he held for her. Once inside, he stood there a little goofily with a lopsided grin and inquisitively raised eyebrow, silent for once. She almost snickered at him, tiptoed daintily closer to place a kiss on his cheek, then twirled out of his arms and swiftly skipped out of the window with a wink.

She found his dumbfounded face quite adorable.

She made herself invisible as she drifted lightly down from the second floor on her umbrella. After a beat of stunned surprise, he stuck his head out the window, looking around in confusion. After a second, he started laughing, genuine and joyful.

“What a gal,” he grinned dreamily, elbows resting on the windowsill.

Invisible, she smiled, and decided he’d passed the test.

Barely two weeks later, she joined forces with him again for a museum heist. As they planned out their approach, he asked if she would join him in going to the harvest festival.

She’d never seen a fairground from the angle of a visitor, rather than a performer. Besides, this one was much bigger than anything her old circus could have set up. Entire streets had been closed to cars and lined with food carts and tents where people sold artisanal goods, festival streamers and face painting for children. Half the city seemed to be there celebrating. It was a pickpocket’s dream: she even noticed a few, her trained eyes noticing what passerby didn’t. Whenever her or her companion spotted one, they’d give their technique a rating from one to ten, Roman adding some scathing commentary. One of them earned the sloppy score of four, and she adroitly emptied his own pockets as she walked past. They bought funnel cake with the money.

There was even a Ferris wheel, and he eagerly took her hand to pull her towards it, running to cut in front of a family, responding to the father’s glare by sticking his tongue out at him. After a long line, they were finally able to embark on one of the cheerily painted gondolas. It was the gilded hour, not long before sunset, the skyline bathed in gold light as they rose up over the city.

“Quite the view, isn’t it? Makes those of us not nimble enough to jump from rooftop to rooftop pretty envious.” He grinned at her, not so subtly passing an arm around her shoulders. She smiled at the compliment, even though the view from the Ferris wheel was much better than the one she usually had from the roofs of the city.

“Envious of that guy, too,” he added, pointing at a plane overhead. “Ever piloted one of those?”

She shook her head no. She’d been a bit too busy lately to keep up with her hobby of stealing any vehicle she could, and she’d never gotten to try a flying machine.

“Well then, we’ll have to steal you one!” he declared. She grinned and nodded, noting the use of “we”. He was staring at her with his lopsided smile, the golden sunlight turning his red hair to fire.

“ _Can I kiss you?_ ” he signed clumsily.

She smirked, grabbed him by the lapels, and did just that.

“Miss Politan,” he breathed when they pulled away, “I’d like to offer you a permanent place in my team. I think you’d be a great asset.”

She knew he didn’t have a “team”. It was just the two of them. And that suited her just fine.

They became a fearsome duo. Over the years, they climbed from the bottom to the top of the wanted list. He was the brain of the operation, the one who picked marks, sold the stolen goods, and coordinated the growing web of contacts and associates necessary in such a trade. She was perfectly content to stay as his second, who didn’t have to bother with the tedious part and could focus on the fun bits: fights, infiltrations, break-ins. Though he might be the one giving the orders, she was his equal. His right hand man, as he always called her, instead of the more tender words neither of them would use. Still, they both knew what it meant.

“She’s a valuable asset,” Cinder tells Salem, nearly eight years after that golden festival day. In her mouth, the word holds none of the warmth it had when he said it. Neo knows Cinder may value a person’s usefulness, but she never values the person. Back in Beacon, at least, she hadn’t been so bitter and so cold. She’d played along, been a good leader for their fake little team. But now she won’t even say a word of thanks for Neo’s loyal services.

But Neo’s not a fool. She’s confident, but not fearless. She knows very well not to pick a fight she can’t win, and staring Salem in the eyes is a very formative experience.

So she’ll follow along. She’ll bide her time.

And the second Ruby Rose is dead, she’s leaving these fools and this nightmare far behind.


End file.
